Visa launches tools for supplier analytics, fraud & AI

Visa has introduced three new commercial payments offerings focused on supplier-spend analysis, virtual-card security and AI-led invoice payments. The measures are aimed at financial institutions, fintechs and businesses handling business-to-business transactions.

The announcement covers an updated version of its Supplier Enablement Spend Analytics platform, a new set of fraud controls for commercial virtual cards and a live pilot with BILL and Billtrust that allows AI agents to complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals.

Darren Parslow, Global Head of Visa Commercial Solutions at Visa, outlined the company's focus on payment automation and oversight.

"Businesses are moving quickly to automate the work around payments, from identifying supplier opportunities to approving invoices and executing transactions," he said. "These capabilities are designed to help them do that with the data, security and controls they need - whether they are growing commercial card acceptance, helping protect virtual-card payments from fraud, or testing how trusted AI agents can act on their behalf."

Analytics update

The revised spend analytics product, SESA 2.0, is intended to help financial institutions identify suppliers more likely to accept commercial card payments. The tool draws on supplier scoring, Visa's commercial payments data, buyer benchmarks and business-value modelling.

The product builds on four years of work assessing supplier payment opportunities. It is designed to help users rank targets for supplier-enablement efforts and estimate the value of commercial card programmes.

According to Visa, the original SESA platform has identified more than USD $600 billion in potential cardable spend since launch. That figure reflects aggregated supplier opportunities identified by the tool between 2021 and 2026.

This matters for issuers because commercial card growth depends partly on persuading suppliers to accept card payments in purchasing flows that have often remained tied to invoices, transfers and manual processes. Better visibility into where acceptance may be feasible could help banks and payment providers target sales and onboarding more efficiently.

Fraud controls

Visa also introduced Visa Commercial Fraud Solutions, a package aimed at reducing risk in commercial virtual card payments. It addresses three points in the payment process: supplier validation, user authentication and transaction controls.

One element, Visa Commercial Supplier Validation, is designed to help confirm that payments are being sent to the intended supplier. Another, Visa Commercial Virtual Authentication, uses 3-D Secure to verify virtual-card users. A third, Visa Commercial Payment Controls, lets businesses set transaction-level limits based on spending amounts, merchant category, location and timing.

Payment Controls are already available in supported countries and territories to eligible issuing financial institutions. Supplier Validation and Virtual Authentication are in pilot and are due for broader availability in 2027.

The launch comes as the virtual card market expands. Visa cited Juniper Research forecasts showing global business-to-business virtual card payment volume reaching USD $14.6 trillion by 2029, equivalent to 83% of the wider virtual card market.

As that market grows, fraud prevention and tighter approval settings are likely to become more important for issuers and large corporate users. Commercial virtual cards are often promoted for their ability to limit exposure through one-time or restricted credentials, but broader use can also create new challenges around supplier identity and user authorisation.

AI payment pilot

The third part of the announcement is a live pilot with BILL and Billtrust. The programme enables trusted AI agents to initiate and complete approved invoice payments through supplier portals.

The pilot uses Visa Intelligent Commerce and Visa's Trusted Agent Protocol to establish the agent's identity, confirm its authority to act and keep transactions within business-defined controls. Rather than relying on shared supplier-portal login credentials, the system uses tokenised payment credentials and links buyer-side invoice approval to supplier-side payment acceptance.

Visa said the pilot is already processing end-to-end transactions involving participating BILL customers and Billtrust suppliers. The project gives businesses a way to test automated payment execution while retaining visibility over which agent is acting, what it is permitted to do and which payments have been approved.

The pilot also reflects a wider shift in financial services towards agent-based software tools that can carry out operational tasks once rules and permissions have been set. In business payments, that could mean software moving from assisting with invoice review and reconciliation to carrying out the payment step itself.

For payment networks and banks, the challenge is to support that automation without weakening audit trails or approval controls. Across the three launches, Visa is emphasising automation combined with verification at each stage of the transaction process, from supplier targeting to payment execution.

The latest products are intended to support more digital business payment flows while maintaining visibility into the parties, credentials and actions involved in each transaction.